Compton celebrates alumni Super Bowl participants with Golden Five ceremony

COMPTON >> The celebration surrounding 50 years of the Super Bowl didn’t end Sunday, as Compton High honored its alumni who have gone on to play in the biggest game of them all with a “Golden Five” ceremony Friday moing.

Marvin Fleming (Compton High class of 1959, Super Bowls I, II, VI, VII and VIII, Green Bay Packers and Miami Dolphins), Roy Jefferson (’61, SB V, Baltimore Colts), Robin Cole (’73 SBs XIII and XIV, Pittsburgh Steelers), Mike Richardson (’79, SBs XX and XXIV, Chicago Bears and San Francisco 49ers) and Solomon Miller (’82, SB XXI, New York Giants), represent the third largest pool of Super Bowl participants of any high school in the country and had the opportunity to present five NFL Golden Balls to their alma mater and give brief speeches in front of family, friends and current students in the school’s auditorium.

“Work and work and work,” Fleming, the first player to ever appear in five Super Bowls, said during his speech. “A lot of times you want to quit and your friends are telling you that you’re doing the wrong thing. Keep doing what you think is best because it’s going to work out. I live by the motto, ‘the harder you work, the luckier you get.’”

After the ceremony, Fleming, who played for two of the most legendary head coaches in NFL history in Vince Lombardi and Don Shula, noted the drastic change in the Super Bowl, and football overall, since experiencing the inaugural event.

“It’s more of a show,” he said. “It’s about making money and when I see the game now I see it as touch football. That’s because of the concussion now and it’s not like it used to be. They had to change it to keep making money and for players’ health. The thing I don’t like about it is guys being hurt. If I had a chance to do it again I would really think hard and seriously about it.”

He also shed some light on the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the league’s only “perfect” team in history, when it comes to the attention the squad is given almost every season when a team reaches week 11 or so with an undefeated mark. The joke normally revolves around the ’72 Phins gathering around and drinking champagne and smoking cigars when the last of the unbeaten finally falls.

“I formed an LLC,” he said. I’m the president of the 1972 Dolphins and I said ‘no, no more.’ We did it one time, popped the champagne one time and then I said ‘if you want to do your champagne you go in the closet.’ Don’t demonstrate it in the world. Everyone thinks we’re old men who don’t want it to be broken. We celebrate our victory, not their defeat, period.”

Cole went on to call for pictures in the school’s halls to commemorate the Compton alumni who have made an impact and to inspire the current generation.

Advertisement

“So you guys can look at a picture and say, ‘if that person can do it, I can do it’,” he said. “It gives you a little belief. There’s not an administrator on this campus that doesn’t believe you can become something big.”

Richardson stressed the importance of forming positive and healthy relationships when students choose who to associate with due to the potential implications of influence, while Miller spoke about change, resiliency, respect and pride and Jefferson’s sister spoke on his behalf as he was unable to attend.

Former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, a key figure in plaing the first Super Bowl, also attended Compton (class of 1944) and was recognized at the event.

- - , .